Sexy, professional baseball player, Ryan Tilton has just introduced himself to Nicky Young, a woman coming of age who has had her business plan accepted by the San Francisco Goliaths for a high school cheer team to perform during their games.

Nicky knows there is something different about their exchange, but no ready to admit anything quite yet. She is afraid of new relationships. She’s been raised in a home where addiction, dysfunction, and abandonment are the usual.

Nicky Young, heroine in Shadow Heart hates her body. She only wants to fit in, and she doesn’t, often getting looks from older men because of the curves of her body and a face that looks twenty-one. She struggles with insecurity and fears that relationships will only be temporary, even with her closest friends. Finally, she feels like she’s met women she can trust, two that are wives of the players on the professional baseball team, The San ...

“You don’t date?” Alex asked, once again joining Tara and me sitting in the bleachers.

“No,” I said.
“Why ever not,” she asked.

I was ridiculously naïve and socially backward in so many ways. Being raised in an alcoholic family can do that. It was better to hide away and shut down rather than feel the extreme joy or intense pain of life.

Like most of us, I had learned from what my parents taught by how they relate to one ...